[bad_user]

      and, perhaps, a similar story could be
      told about Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs started as an engineer and had Wozniak as his best friend.

And if you think you can find a Steve Wozniak that can design a usable computer from a minimal number of chips, with a design that's extensible, with colored graphics, that can also write the software for it and that you can convince to quit his job for you ... good luck with that ;)

[dkrich]

What difference does it make? Jobs didn't make his name as an engineer. Technology of any kind is a means to an end. Knowing how to code a site is very much like knowing how to lay brick. It's a specialized skill to complete a certain task. In 20 years all of these "hackers" who are supposedly so valuable while the worthless business guys try to waste their time will be using completely different products in completely different contexts. Just because web app development is hot right now does not mean knowing how to code will make you rich. You still have to know what to build and how to create something that people want to buy. The tools are merely a cheap means of building a scalable distribution system.

The reason I bring this up is that I am often reminded of the 96 WWDC where Jobs is lambasted by somebody for getting rid of their precious Java development tool of the day. At the time it was a horrible decision. Now the tools they were clinging to would be considered obsolete and horrendous by any measure. It is important to keep perspective no matter what you are working on. At the core it is always about your product.

This coming from a person with two degrees in Computer Science and many years of software development experience.

[kamaal]

Let us put it this way. Knowing how to execute and executing should make you rich.

No matter what that is. Selling is also execution, Raising money is also execution and Coding is also execution.

But the word 'Business person' generally invokes the image of a middle level manager in a corporate whose only expertise seems to forwarding emails, filling up online forms and politics.

That is why most hackers think a 'Business person' is useless. While the fact is everybody has a role to play.

[bad_user]

     At the core it is always about your product

I never disagreed on this point. Ideas are important too, but ideas only act as a multiplicator of value, so good execution by itself doesn't provide enough value and ideas without execution are meaningless.

     What difference does it make? Jobs didn't
     make his name as an engineer

That's not what matters here, and yes it makes a difference.

To be able to come up with ideas, to be able to have a vision, to be able to have taste, to be able to drive a product, you do have to have an educated mind in that domain, you do need to know what is possible, you do need to be able to do the job yourself if you need to, even if you're not that good as an engineer.

How can you come up with ideas otherwise? And the proof is simple really. Every great idea that revolutionized our world, from electricity, to personal computers, to the Internet, to search engines, to the smartphone you're carrying, everything has come from minds of individuals that know their basics.

Ideas and vision don't come out of thin air. It is often said that a university's purpose shouldn't be to prepare you for real life jobs, but rather to expand your horizons on what's possible and I believe so too.

This is why I consider people with MBAs, but with no technical education, to be basically worthless in startups (and I'm not talking about degrees here, self-taught is good enough). So you have an idea, great for you, however you have to prove that either you know what you're talking about, or have a proven track record of successful implementations of your ideas that worked. This attitude is just meritocracy in action.

Also, I see a lot of resentment here, with people getting offended by this attitude of programmers towards business-types. But we aren't the ones that started it, it was the business types that wanted to turn us into stupid and replaceable assembly lines. Ask the developers in the games industry how they get treated. Well you get what you sow.

[dkrich]

> To be able to come up with ideas, to be able to have a vision, to be able to have taste, to be able to drive a product, you do have to have an educated mind in that domain, you do need to know what is possible, you do need to be able to do the job yourself if you need to, even if you're not that good as an engineer.

This is just very, very wrong. All things being equal I would certainly bet on the person with some domain experience in engineering if engineering is a major component of the product. But I would much rather partner with somebody who can go out and make sales, define products, and hustle than somebody who knows how to code. Knowing how to code is a blip in time. It is not something that is necessary to build a successful business. Getting paying customers is and always will be. You can sit behind a computer screen drinking Mountain Dew all day and build the greatest software product in the world. Nobody will care if you don't know how to establish sales. Skilled coders are valuable for creating code, and that shouldn't be dismissed- it's a valuable skill. It's just a fairly common skill. That is, if you have the money you can always find a skilled coder. It is MUCH harder to find a person who can recognize customer needs, get a product created, and get sales, and sales are the lifeblood of a business. We've all seen the "idea" guys who say "wouldn't it be cool if you had a site that did blah blah blah?" Could you build that? Of course those guys are worthless. I'm talking about the guys (or gals) who have that idea and go out and actually get the product built and sold. Those are the rare people you want to partner with.

> Also, I see a lot of resentment here, with people getting offended by this attitude of programmers towards business-types. But we aren't the ones that started it, it was the business types that wanted to turn us into stupid and replaceable assembly lines. Ask the developers in the games industry how they get treated. Well you get what you sow.

I actually see the reverse. I think a lot of programmers don't want to admit that people without any coding experience can create valuable software products just by assembling the right team but GASP not actually doing the coding themselves. Again, this is coming from a programmer.